


he's found his rosebud

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Genre: Emotionally Crippled Erik Is Fun To Read, Framing Story, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-X3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of his trip to San Fransisco, Erik is forced to deal with life alone. Utterly alone. Until a boy arrives and asks one simple question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he's found his rosebud

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/7315.html?thread=13836947) from ages and ages ago.
> 
> Betaed by **ninemoons42** , though any and all remaining mistakes are mine.

“For this project, I interviewed a man named Max Eisenhardt. That’s not actually his real name, but that’s the name that he said I could use for this.

“Eisenhardt was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the US in 1962. He had many stories to tell, though not with actual details about being in the country for the rise of Mutants.

“This is what he told me,” Keith says just before he looks at his notes and starts to read.

-

Despite all his knowledge of the world, physics included, he waits.

He waits, expecting a wheelchair to come up to his table and for their game to continue.

He waits so often that the rest of the men in the park leave him be. They nod hellos and then leave him to sit. Always waiting.

-

On a bright and slightly chilly day, Keith walks through the park, absently thinking about his project for school.

It’s totally a bullshit project, talking to people they don’t know (why is Ms. Johnson making them talk to strangers when there are pedophiles out there anyway?) just to find some unspoken history.

But a project’s a project and so he walks through the chess park, looking for someone interesting.

There’s a guy, totally alone, at a table that no one else bothers, and he sort of seems like the perfect choice. He’s old, and the slump in his shoulders says that he’s carried one too many burdens in his life.

“Mind if I play?” he asks to the older man.

There’s a slight upturn of the man’s shoulders before he makes a flourish with his left hand.

“Do you even know how to play?” he grinds out, irritated.

“Gramps taught me. I’m no Bobby Fischer, but I’m not bad.”

“Well, then, your move.”

-

Whoever this boy is, he’s a decent chess player. After so many weeks of waiting, there’s something nice to having an opponent. A challenge.

Too bad that for all his moves the kid just can't keep his mouth shut.

“So I have this project for school.”

Erik makes a disinterested noise as he looks at the board. “And?”

“Well, we’re supposed to talk to someone and get their personal history and you look like a guy with a million skeletons in his closet.”

“How’d you guess that?”

“The jacket and cap. Not really stylish these days. Like, I think I saw stuff like that from the 70s.”

Erik scoffs, even though he knows that his current wardrobe is what he managed to buy from the 70s when they were mostly underground.

“What if I did have a story to tell?”

“Then, well, could I write about it for school?” the boy asks, eyes hopeful at the prospect. Entirely too human for his tastes, but in the last three weeks, Erik’s slowly been adjusting to being human again.

“Why not. Just not today. Mate in two,” he says just as he moves his bishop.

“Tomorrow then?”

“Of course. If we’re not going to play, though, do bring some coffee.”

Erik gets up and leaves Keith to examine the board.

-

There’s only one way to describe how he feels after the old guy left: shocked. Keith never expected the old man to actually say yes to being part of the project, at least not with how closed off and guarded he is at all times.

The man looks like he wants to be constantly shrouded from everyone else, and maybe that’ll help make this project something that Ms. Johnson can be proud of.

As he walks home, he starts to think through questions he should ask and hurries into his apartment so he won’t forget them.

The list is long enough, he thinks, as he eyes his math book and opens it.

Ms. Johnson’s English assignment isn’t the only thing he has to worry about.

-

The kid walks up with a cup of coffee, and Erik cracks a small smile. At least he pays attention and respects his elders. This whole thing might not be horrible after all.

“Thank you,” he says once the kid puts the coffee on the table. “So what sort of questions do you have?”

The kid nearly chokes on his own drink, but recovers. “I only came with a few today, but I figured if these lead to more questions, we’d keep going.”

“Fair enough. Begin.”

“First off, what’s your name?”

Erik ponders, because he knows that the governments of the world would still wish him dead, even given the events in San Francisco. “Max.”

“Max - ?”

“Max Eisenhardt.”

The kid’s scribbling away in a journal, which is sort of adorable. “When were you born?”

“1931.”

“Where?”

“Europe.”

“Can you be more specific than that?”

“At this point, no. I think it was Poland - might have been Germany, but then the Germans took over - or it was theirs already, and then, well, I wasn’t there very long.”

“Where did you go from there?”

“A ghetto and then a camp.”

“You’re Jewish?”

Erik figures, if he’s being honest, he can show the kid the real effects of the Holocaust. He pulls off his jacket and rolls up his sleeve. “What do you think?”

The kid stares at the fading numbers for a minute before he speaks again. “What camp were you at?”

“Not one that anyone’s heard of. And with good reason.” He wants to spit out the name Schmidt while he can, but he knows well enough that most records of where he was were erased long ago.

“What happened when you got out?”

Erik arches an eyebrow at how the kid manages to avoid the messy details. “I went to Israel for a bit, and then I moved around too often.”

“Doing what?”

“Various things, that I don’t think your teacher is expecting from this project. Move along.”

“Okay, so if you moved around, how’d you get to America?”

“I was looking for someone and came here. Then I just sort of stayed.”

“Your friends and family?”

Erik balks, and covers it up with a sip of coffee. It's cold now. “I had friends, but they’re gone. Never any family. At least not here.”

“Is that why you’re always alone? Are you waiting on your friends?”

“I’m waiting for one, though I know he’ll never arrive.”

“Then why stay here?”

“The possibility.”

-

Max’s answers are as confusing as they are terse, and that’s driving Keith crazy. But, at least it’s a start. Tomorrow, his questions will focus on what seems to be missing from his notes so far.

Namely, when Max came to the US and a bit more about his friends.

-

Keith’s smart enough to bring another coffee and that fact makes Erik smile again. He knows that they’re not going to play a game today, so the metal set he has stays in its box.

“So I wanted to go back to something you said yesterday. Is that okay?” Keith asks.

“It’s your project, so go ahead.”

“You were vague about how you came here. Who were you looking for and when?”

Erik considers before saying, “I was looking for a man who ruined my childhood, but his name doesn’t matter. In 1962 I arrived in Florida, looking for him.”

“Is that how you met your friends after that?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. At the time, I didn’t think of them as friends - just as co-workers. But they became more - important - later.”

“Can you tell me about them? Who are they?”

“They’re both very different people now, so it’s not a huge matter. One recently died.”

“So that’s not the friend you’re waiting for.”

“Actually, he is. But again, that's too much for your report.”

“Florida? How long were you there?”

“Just a day or so. Then we moved to another location.”

“Where?”

“Classified. Sorry.”

Keith frowns, but recovers well enough. “Can you tell me where you were at all during the rest of 1962.”

“Sadly no. Well,” he pauses, “I was in New York for a while. That’s not revealing too much.”

“With your friends?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“What did you do after 1962? You stayed here, and then?”

“I went underground. No one particularly liked me at the start of 1963.”

“Why are you here now?”

“Many things have changed over the last fifty years. I am no longer as much of a threat now as I was then. At this point, I no longer have anything to hide.”

“Except you won’t tell me anything. That’s not being very open,” Keith says.

“It’s an old habit, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I guess that’ll be it for now. I think I need a few days to look into what you said and then I’ll come back next week.”

Erik nods, and waits for Keith to leave. He sighs heavily as soon as the boy is out of earshot and wonders what exactly he’s gotten himself into.

-

Too bad Max’s story so far isn't really a story, just vague details of a life and the past sixty years. But that’s never been enough to stop him from doing an assignment, and now that Max’s said even less than before, he’s curious.

Keith silently thanks his mom for getting them DSL so he can do a little digging.

First things first, there has to be something on Max Eisenhardt on the internet. There just has to be.

AOL doesn't have much to offer him, but Google looks better. There are plenty of people who think that Max is an alias for Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, though no one can prove it.

In that moment, Keith’s really glad he paid attention to the Mutant History unit last year because that fact fills in more than a few gaps on why Max, really Erik, has been so quiet.

This old guy for his English project is really the now human leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants.

-

Erik misses Keith’s presence at the park more than he wants to admit. Surprisingly, talking to the kid helps to make sense of his life. Perspective is a damn bitch, but being that vague about his past is forcing Erik to relive the good days and the bad as he tries to make sense of it all.

Even now, 1962 stands out for him as a bright spot in his life. It was then that he met Charles and Mystique, and started to come into his own as a mutant being. He is the man he is now because of those events, painful as they are now - and being responsible in one way or another for Charles's paralysis haunts him even now, more so than did the treatment he'd received from Schmidt in the camps.

Still, he wouldn't change the events of Cuba for anything in the world. He needs to remember those things, because they are the reasons why he runs his Brotherhood as he does. He's a leader because of those events, and one who looks ahead with clear vision - not one who wants appeasement.

Charles is - was - too much into consensus. Coalitions do not make up the most powerful organizations and they never will.

Erik stops himself from continuing this train of thought, though, as he looks at the sky turning purple and pink in the late afternoon. Time to go back to his small apartment and drink. He has nothing else to do now.

-

His searches on the internet are only so useful, and so Keith starts to look around the local branch of the New York Public Library for more books and information. There are plenty of books written about Charles Xavier and his X-Men, and even a few books written about the Brotherhood. Those all help to fill in the gaps “Max” left out, and that fills Keith with a sense of pride that this paper is going to turn out so well.

But the more he works through the information in the books and the more he thinks about what he’s reading, the more he realizes that outing Max now is just as dangerous.

Even now that he's a baseline human, Magneto is still one of the FBI's Most Wanted. There’s great potential in shedding light on Magneto as a man - especially as a man riddled with grief - but is that worth outing him and his location?

Keith spends that night and part of the next day thinking long and hard about it. He types up a few versions of the story he wants to tell and thinks that he’ll go to the park tomorrow and ask Max.

Max has the right to say yes or no to anything Keith might write about him, especially with all the research he did.

-

There’s a coffee on Erik’s table when he arrives the next day at the park and Keith’s bright jacket just off to the side.

“Come here, Keith. You’ve obviously got something to say,” he calls so that everyone within twenty feet can hear.

Keith walks quickly, looking just a little nervous before he sits across from him.

“So, I finished the paper, but,” he trails off.

“But what?”

“Well, I sort of went looking for more than what you said before, and I found something.”

“What something?”

“Who you really are.” The kid waves his hands in some horrible mockup of Magneto’s style, but Erik knows what Keith means.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I brought over three versions of the paper I can turn in, with various degrees of information about you. Will you read them and choose which one you want me to submit?”

Erik nods his head and picks up the stapled papers. “Can I take them home tonight and bring them back tomorrow?”

“You can do anything, Max.”

Keith walks away and leaves Erik to look at the papers, shocked at Keith’s determination.

-

Keith fidgets all the way way and can't hold in his nerves as he waits for Max's reply.

His mom asks what’s wrong and he’s not sure how to answer her question without giving away too much of what he’s found in the last few days. “Just something about my project for Ms. Johnson. I’m showing it to the man I interviewed for his approval.”

“That’s sweet. I’m sure you didn’t have to do that.”

“I did, and I think it’s only right once I figured it all out.”

Keith feels her rub her hand through his hair. “That’s good. Why don’t you go take a night off then?”

He nods and walks to his room, still nervous as hell.

-

The three versions of Keith's paper show wide research and a depth that Erik hasn’t seen in many articles about him. His own words are at the heart of it - but it is also a look at the last fifty years, with the events of Erik's life serving as a lens upon his actions. Every page is surprisingly thoughtful.

Given everything from the last six months, Erik thinks the narrative with the least number of details about Magneto is best for Keith’s class.

There’s no reason for the poor kid to get the third degree just because he happened upon Erik in the park.

-

Keith hurries from school to the part to see Max, and find out what paper he can even turn in on Friday.

Max is at his table, as always, with a cup of coffee in hand.

“You did an excellent job, Keith. I like all of them.”

“But,” Keith trails off.

“I think it prudent to go with the one with the least information as possible.”

“I thought the same thing, but wanted you to have a say. I’ll burn the other copies and erase them from my computer if you want.”

“There’s no need for that. You keep them. Maybe in twenty years, you can publish it.”

Keith smiles and says, “Thank you. I learned more than I thought.”

“I’m glad, I suppose.”

Erik nods and walks away, into the crowd of other park-goers and myriad citizens of Manhattan.

-

Erik reads over the paper Keith didn’t share and smiles.

That narrative feels as close to Erik’s life as he can imagine, and given how fleeting he knows his time might well be at this point, he keeps the copy.

When he meets with an estate attorney to draft a will, he asks if the firm can also make sure that this paper is published as his obituary. Given that he’s paying them well and that they are a pro-mutant firm, he’s shared his true identity and they don’t give him any more looks.

They keep one copy of the paper and Erik keeps the other.

He finds that he likes to read it when he can, still impressed by what this high schooler had to say about his life. His whole life.

The life seems so much better though Keith’s eyes, even now.

That makes his life a life worth living.


End file.
